In U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,878, there is disclosed a clip assembly in the form of a row of U-shaped sheet metal clips. The clips are maintained in alignment with each other either by means of a pliant carrier strip which may be a plastic tape, most suitably a polyester plastic tape, the width of which is slightly less than the width of the clips, which is adhered to the clips by means of an adhesive, such as a pressure sensitive adhesive, or by means of a continuous layer of an adhesive substance per se, applied to the undulatory surfaces constituting the arched crown portions of the clips. The clip assembly of the patent is adapted to be used with a hand-held clinching tool provided with a magazine for receiving the clip assembly, and along which the clip assembly is pushed in the direction of the forming jaw of the tool by a slidable member, such as a spring biased follower, in abutting engagement with the last clip of the assembly. Exemplary of such a tool is the tool disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,641,656. While the patent states that an "indeterminate" or "indefinite" number of the pliant material adhesively held U-clips can be spiraled into a coil, and that such a coil "could be extensive enough to keep an automatic clipreforming tool operating for an entire workday", in actual practice those statements proved to be merely prophetic and, in actual commercial usage in the field, the attainment of those goals was found in no way to be attainable. More specifically in this connection, with the introduction of high-speed clinching tools, whether they be of the stationary type, or robot-like in operation, wherein each clip of the clip assembly is successively pull-fed, at a rapid rate, into the forming jaw of the clinching tool, the clip assembly made in accordance with the preferred embodiment shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,878 could not withstand the forces applied to it by such tools with the result that the plastic tape would peel-off the crown portion of the clips, and the clips would be easily dislodged from the clip assembly. Coil failure, therefore, regularly and inevitably occurred. As a consequence, the clip assembly made in accordance with the patent was later found, in commercial operations, to be limited to use in lengths of up to about 45 clips, and could only be used with a tool such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,641,656. An operator, therefore, was compelled to reload the magazine of the tool as many as five times in order to complete a single mattress innerspring, for example. Moreover, it was found that the clip assembly of the patent could not be wound, under tension, into a tight, integrated roll, in the manner of a spool of thread or wire, because the the plastic tape would peel-off the crown portions of the clips, and the clip assembly would tend to unravel and fall away from the roll, thereby creating shipping and handling problems which made the use of the clip assembly in roll form impractical and uneconomical.
In copending continuation-in-part U.S. patent application Ser. No. 586,669, filed Mar. 6, 1984, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,508,220, dated Apr. 2, 1985, an improved clip assembly is disclosed which is uniquely adapted for use in automatic clinching tools of the type employed in high-speed production line operations. The integrated, high-strength structural features of the assembly of said copending application, coupled with an optimum degree of flexibility, enable the assembly to be formed, in the manner of a spool of thread or wire, into a compact, easily handled, self-sustaining cylindrically shaped, tightly wound roll comprising at least several thousand U-shaped clips, indeed, as many as about 12,500 or somewhat more of such clips. The roll, when mounted for rotation on a rod or spindle, for example, can be pull-fed at a high rate of speed into the forming jaw of an automatic clip-clinching tool without any failure of the clip assembly or the tightly wound roll. Use of the assembly in the form of a roll comprising thousands of interconnected U-shaped clips reduces down times to a minimum thereby enhancing significantly the efficiency and the economic advantages of the overall automated operation. Thus, by way of illustration, in the manufacture of a mattress innerspring, approximately 180 to approximately 250 clips are required to be wrapped on the wire members forming each mattress innerspring. Utilizing a tape-held clip assembly of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,878, such an assembly can, as stated, only actually be used in lengths of up to about 45 clips in commercial operations. As a result, an operator of a push-feed type clip wrapping tool such as is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,641,656, capable of applying 120 clips a minute, is compelled to reload clips into the magainze of the tool at least about four or five times in order to complete a single mattress innerspring. Stated differently, an operator using the tape-held assembly of U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,878, where five reloads of clips are necessary to complete a mattress innerspring, is required to stop about 2.66 times each minute to reload the clip wrapping tool. In the case of a skilled operator, each reloading takes approximately 10 seconds. Out of each minute, therefore, approximately 26.6 seconds are lost in reloading the tool. In marked contrast to the situation with the pliant material adhered carrier strip or tape-held clips of U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,878, the present invention makes feasible, as stated, the use of a clip assembly in the form of a tightly wound roll comprising of the order of about 12,500 clips, or 277.7 times the number of clips on a 45 clip strip of the type disclosed in said U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,878. As a result, 277.7 fewer reloadings of a clip wrapping tool are required, or, in terms of time, a savings of 2777 seconds, or 46.3 minutes per roll.